Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention generally relate to processing identity records in an entity resolution system, and more particularly, to applying a set of best value determination rules to entities in an entity resolution system.
Description of the Related Art
In an entity resolution system, identity records are loaded and resolved against known identities to derive a network of entities and relationships between entities. An “entity” generally refers to an organizational unit used to store identity records that are resolved at a “zero-degree relationship.” That is, each identity record associated with a given entity is believed to describe the same person, place, or thing (e.g.: the identity of an employee represented as an employee record from an employee database entity-resolved with the identity of a property owner from the county assessor's public records). Thus, one entity may reference multiple individual identities with potentially different values for various attributes. This is frequently benign, e.g., in a case where an entity includes two identities with different names, a first being an identity record identifying a woman based on a familial surname and a second identity record identifying the same woman based on a married surname. Of course, in other cases, differing attribute values between identities in the same entity may be an indication of mischief or a problem, e.g., in a case where one individual is impersonating another, using a fictitious identity, or engaging in some form of identity theft. The entity resolution system may link entities to one another by relationships. For example, a first entity may have a 1st degree with a second entity based on identity records (in one entity, the other, or both) that indicate the individuals represented by these two entities are married to one another, reside at the same address, or share some other common information.
The process of resolving identity records and detecting relationships between entities may be performed using pre-determined or configurable entity resolution rules. Typically, relationships between two entities are derived from information (e.g., a shared address, employer, telephone number, etc.) in identity records that indicate a relationship between the two entities. Two examples of such rules include the following:                If the inbound identity record has a matching “Social Security Number” and close “Full Name” to an existing entity, then resolve the new identity to the existing entity.        If the inbound identity record has a matching “Phone Number” to an existing entity, then create a relationship between the entity of the inbound identity record and the one with the matching phone number.The first rule adds a new inbound record to an existing entity, where the second creates a relationship between two entities based on the inbound record. Of course, the entity resolution rules may be tailored based on the type of inbound identity records and to suit the needs of a particular case.        
Entity resolution systems may also include rules for detecting relevant identities, entities, conditions, or events, i.e., rules for generating alerts based on incoming identity records. For example, a rule may check the attributes of an inbound identity record and generate an alert when a particular match is found (e.g., the inbound identity record is of interest because it includes an address within a particular zip-code). Or an alert rule may specify situations where an assigned role of an inbound identity record conflicts with an assigned role of another identity record with which the inbound record has a relationship at zero or more degrees (e.g., an entity with an assigned role of “Employee” has a strong relationship to an entity with an assigned role of “Vendor”). As another example, an alert rule may be defined as a combination of both methods (e.g., alert whenever an entity with the “Nevada Gaming Black List” role also has the “Hotel Guest” role and the hotel involved is located in the state of “Nevada”). Of course, the relevance rules used may be tailored to suit the needs of a particular case. The entity resolution system may include an alert analysis system configured to allow analysts to review and analyze alerts, entities, and identities, as well as provide comments or assign a disposition to alerts generated by the entity resolution system.
In entity resolution systems, a single entity may have multiple values for the same attribute type due to historical attributes accumulated over time or due to the nature of the attribute type. For example, an entity may have multiple addresses, phone numbers, driver's license numbers, names, etc. Multiple values may also exist due to the variety of systems from which identity records are drawn. Moreover, different record systems may introduce typos, transposition of characters, or system-specific alterations, such as the truncation of addresses.